Yesterday and today have/will be consumed by real work and meetings running into the late evening. I should be back to a ‘regular’ posting pattern sometime tonight.
As usual, there are many interesting folks on the blogrolls. Take a look at a few that you don’t regularly visit.
Wow, this guy really doesn’t like bloggers and in particular Movable Type users.
Via The Commissar.
Earlier today Zombyboy noted:
Blog traffic is up quite a bit today, but not for any good reason. Apparently, the world is pretty curious about …
Well, traffic seemed pretty normal to me until about 4 hours ago (1:00 AM GMT) when something I posted yesterday made it to number 2 for a certain set of google search terms and started a minor googlanche.
I don’t expect to get any repeat visitors out of this group either. Darn.
Update (2/5) Interest in this subject is ongoing. The above mentioned googlanche continues and has expanded to include Yahoo and MSN which are two search sources that normally don’t show up here very often.
Atrios states:
Some day our country is going to have to take a long hard look at itself and wonder why it tolerates massive amounts of violence on TV, but a single Boob is capable of driving us collectively insane.
And Jaquandor asks the same quesion this way:
why are we so incredibly tolerant of things in our popular culture like bullets shredding bodies, limbs being severed, and massive explosions killing hundreds — and yet so incredibly scandalized by a wide-angled shot, lasting for mere seconds, of a female breast whose nipple isn’t even exposed?
The FCC, to the extent it should do anything at all, would do well to ‘take a long hard look’ at this issue.
Britsh home secretary david blunkett apparently drinks from the same cup as US attorney general john ashcroft. blunkett is proposing changes to British law that fly in the face of individual rights:
The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 allows foreigners who are suspected international terrorists to be detained indefinitely without charge or trial in the event their lives would be in danger if they were deported.
…….
Mr Blunkett wants to extend this so prosecutors can take action against suspected British extremists even though the evidence may not be strong enough to win a conviction under existing laws.
This may mean lowering the burden of proof in such cases from “beyond reasonable doubt” to what is acceptable in civil cases, “the balance of probabilities”
…..
Evidence in the new trials would be kept secret from the defendants …
…..
We have to have prevention under a new category which is to intervene before the act is committed, rather than do so by due process after the act is committed when it’s too late.
This may mean lowering the burden of proof in such cases from “beyond reasonable doubt” to what is acceptable in civil cases, “the balance of probabilities”.
None of this is acceptable under any circumstances whether applied to citizens or non-citizens.
When dealing with someones life or when justifying war “beyond a reasonable doubt” needs to be a minimum standard.
Via David Carr at Samizdata.